Stockholm
25 February 2005
STOCKHOLM
February 25 - 2005
In collaboration with Italian Cultur Institute, Stockholm New Music Festival
GIORGIO BATTISTELLI PORTRAIT
Orazie Curiazi *
for 2 percussionists (1996)
Aphrodite *
for reciter, harp, flutes and 3 percussionists (1987)
on text by Pierre Louys
Erasmo Gaudiomonte conductor
Silvia Fanfani Schiavoni, voice
Gianni Trovalusci flute
Patrizia Radici harp
ARS LUDI percussion
Piero Schiavoni sound direction
*premiere in Sweden
It frequently happens that friendships and also professional and artistic associations originate at school. Erasmo Gaudiomonte discovered this when, in the composition class of Giancarlo Bizzi at L'Aquila Conservatory, he became one of a group of youngsters of his own age who were all interested in New Music: Giorgio Battistelli, Paolo Giuliani, Roberto Marabante, Francesco Piazza, Gianni Trovalusci. Together they followed the seminars of Stockhausen and Kagel at Cologne and formed the Edgar Varèse Ensemble. They then went their separate ways - conductor, composer, soloist - but still continued to meet in rewarding collaborations, such as for instance the coming monographic concert at Stockholm on 25 February, during the Stockholm New Music Festival, which is dedicated to the composer Giorgio Battistelli. In addition to Battistelli's Orazi e Curazi for three percussionists, the programme includes the chamber opera Aphrodite (texts by Pierre Louys), sung on this occasion by Silvia Schiavoni.
"Accustomed" to first performances (Giorgio Battistelli, Guido Castagnoli, Aldo Clementi, Lorenzo Ferrero, Luca Francesconi, Ennio Morricone, Roman Vlad, among others), contemporary music has remained the central feature of Gaudiomonte's activity, since he believes that in its case it is possible to materialize with the performers certain nodal aspects of the work. If, on the one hand, difficulties increase owing to the necessity for redefining musical parameters that are from time to time different (in particular during first performances), on the other hand a stimulating latitude permits the shaping of novel results with delicate and intangible emotional balances between the performers (the young are more receptive in this sense - claims the conductor - since they are not hampered by stratifications). "I am not a dictator", he emphasizes, "I prefer to steer the musicians so that together we reach the objectives I wish to achieve". His long experience as conductor with many concerts and with the Orchestra Sinfonica Abruzzese (1981-1992) seems to have given Gaudiomonte the tools for carrying out this delicate phase of orchestration, with the standard unavoidable techniques accompanied however by a good dose of psychology. (in Sonora News n. 14 pp.2-3)